Urban Protest Movements

From Boston crowds taunting redcoats in 1770 to the half-million Los Angelenos demonstrating against federal immigration policy in 2006, urban Americans have often expressed their discontent by, in the vernacular of the 1960s, “takin'it to the streets.” Workers have protested low wages, unsafe working conditions, and unfair tax policies. Women have demonstrated for a voice in politics and equality in the workplace. Minorities have marched for civil rights and economic justice. Identity groups of all stripes, from gays and lesbians to disaffected veterans to animal rights activists, have stopped traffic to promote their causes. Nativists, xenophobes, and racists have also made themselves heard in the streets. Protesters have used economic boycotts, petition drives, riots, marches, media campaigns, and other tactics to grab the attention of the public and the government. Whatever the cause or the form, mass protest in the streets has had the power to precipitate change throughout American history.

Events leading up to the American Revolution exemplify the historical significance of urban protest. Drunken crowds of Bostonians burned effigies and sacked the homes of royal officials. Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave and out-of-work seaman, stood at the forefront of a crowd of street protesters when Captain Preston and his men killed him and four others, an incident that became known as the Boston Massacre. In New York, crowds of patriots tore down a statue of George III to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Without the threat posed to commercial and political interests caused by such mob action, George III would have had little need to respond to the enlightened dissent of Paine or Jefferson.

During the early Republic, the sin and vice that accompanied urban life became the main sources of protest. As cities grew in the Northeast along with early industry, problems such as alcoholism, prostitution, and illiteracy became more apparent. Into the new urban milieu stepped evangelical ministers, such as New York's Charles Grandison Finney, who mobilized crowds of city dwellers to preach, distribute religious tracts, and condemn sinful behavior. Finney's enthusiasm inspired a thousand New Yorkers to distribute religious tracts in the taverns and on the streets of the city. No evil ranked higher on the antebellum reformer's agenda than slavery. Abolitionist editors such as William Lloyd Garrison published primarily for urban audiences.

The passions inspired by the abolitionist press often spilled from the papers into the streets. Evangelical churches in New York, Philadelphia, and New England sponsored public meetings, swelling beyond the capacity of chapels, to decry the immorality of slavery. Nearly 4,000 mourners gathered before the Tremont Temple Baptist Church in Boston to commemorate the execution of John Brown in 1860. Abolitionist activism also led to a backlash by supporters of the slave economy. Southerners viewed the mourning of Brown as another sign that antislavery sentiment threatened the southern economy and way of life. In New York, a crowd of 2,000 whites converged on the Chatham Street Chapel to disrupt an antislavery meeting while a group of rioters smashed up the home of Lewis Tappan, the city's leading abolitionist. Garrison himself was stoned and dragged through the streets by a Boston anti-abolitionist mob.

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